For those unaware, in May 2018 my father died after nearly a decade of living with Alzheimers’. All Saints’ Day and All Saints’ Sunday in the Christian calendar provide an opportunity to remember and celebrate our loved ones who have died, those saints who have left this life and are now wholly in the presence of God, having gone before us as fellow members of God’s family. Today I give thanks for my dad and direct my thoughts to him.
Hi Dad. Still miss you. You may know – I don’t know what is revealed to you – we have a baby girl. Your first granddaughter. Now the season between your birthday and death day will be marked by this new life, just before Easter.
I wish I could hear your advice about parenting. About so much. This time of year is a wistful one, and it reminds me of going to school, soccer, homework, walking in the hills, raking… remember when you helped me rake leaves at that big house for hours and hours, when French club was raising money? You are such a good dad. You were so invested in us and what we were doing. You didn’t seem to have big plans for yourself, your career. You focused on living quietly and faithfully.
Saint. You were a saint. Not because of your perfection (who has that?) or your great successes in ministry (you might not even think you had any). Because, good grief, you loved Jesus. You loved all of us because of how He loved you and you Him. Your heart was transformed and you turned away from so much of what you had formerly loved to follow Christ.
You were and are a saint. Now your faith is sight, fulfilled through the passage of death into God’s presence and entire, whole life. You’re experiencing what I long for — wholeness. Completion. Healing. Utter joy. What range of emotions do you have? I wonder if new emotions exist that we don’t know about here.
Saint. Faithful to the end. Just like Mom was to you. Believing, trusting, serving. You went through the door far too soon for my liking. But my will did not make the determination; God decided. He decided you had run your race, kept the faith, fought your good fight. He decided you needed to go Home. He’ll do that on my behalf too. I hope I accept it as you did. I hope I keep praising, praying, loving, even when my end is in sight.
One thing I loved about your particular sainthood is how you kept creating. Your art grew simpler and more abstract, but that mark of the Creator lasted on you a good long while. You knew, in someplace deeper than memory and cognition and speech, Whose you were. You knew your allegiance, and you knew your destination. And I know the Lord never departed from you or your heart, even after we couldn’t communicate, even after you stopped getting out of bed. He never left, and you never left His presence. In fact, you may have mysteriously been more and more in it, even as you seemed more absent to us.
Until, one glorious and grievous moment, you were no longer in our company, no longer breathing scraggly gasps. No longer diseased. One moment you died and lived. Your eyes gave up their sight only to see anew, fully, and you saw God.
We saw only you, not much different from the hours before. We saw only that your chest stopped moving. We sighed, somehow both saddened and relieved at your relief. We wept and didn’t leave. I think people always did want to be around you. Now we still couldn’t leave. I felt that the funeral home people came to take you too soon, yet at the right time. They wheeled you out and I haven’t seen you since. Not in the same way.
Gosh I miss you. I want to walk with you through leaves and dirt, hearing your harmonica waft in the woods. I want to tell you about our life and see you play with my cat and maybe you’d build us a crib for this baby. I want to play word games and beat you at Dragons and try to get better at frisbee under your guidance. I want to sing worship and hymns to your guitar playing and hear your joy as you eat my scones. I want you to read my writing and tell me it’s good.
You might want those things too, but you have something greater now than all you had before. You have life abundant, permanent, in the unfiltered presence, unmasked love of Almighty God. As magical as it is to watch copper and golden leaves drift to earth in the autumn sun, still I long for what you have. I long for you, yet more for what you have now. And I long for what’s to come, when Jesus makes all things new, even these leaves and light.
Saint. My father, my brother in Christ, my fellow image bearer. Pray for me. That I would follow in that good way your feet know so well.
I love you always.
Your Emmie.
